As the level of automation has increased in mass production facilities, and the speed of welding operations has increased, it has become increasingly important for management personnel to monitor and control welding parameters, processes, and weld cell set-up parameters in a facility. Proper monitoring and control helps to ensure consistent and proper joining of materials, to ensure that completed welds fall within predetermined quality parameters, and to ensure that material waste and operational downtime is avoided.
The need for improved monitoring, moreover, has increased in recent years as welding personnel on the factory floor are frequently inexperienced in welding operations. Often, operators are minimally trained, and cannot properly choose weld parameters, or identify and correct for problems encountered during welding processes and weld set-up. Therefore, it is also important for management personnel to monitor weld and operator performance, and to quickly identify problem operators and areas.
As a result, there are differing levels of monitoring requirements in most facilities. Operators are typically interested only in monitoring very basic command and readout parameters, and in having access to very basic controls. Supervisory personnel, however, need to access large numbers of control parameters, feedback parameters, and weld set-up parameters to properly monitor, control, and troubleshoot welding problems. Moreover, it is important for supervisory personnel to be able to choose the types of data monitored, in order to evaluate and focus in on parameters that might be outside of an appropriate range, or that might provide a basis for analyzing problems in a weld. Monitoring selected controls and parameters simplifies the process for management personnel to analyze the welding process, identify problems, and make corrections before significant down time or waste of material occurs.
Additionally, when problems are encountered with equipment in a weld cell, or with consumables in the cell, it is important for management personnel to identify these failures and to make correction and replacements easily. In an automated environment, it is particularly important to be able to replace a piece of equipment from a cell with an alternative component providing the same feature, and to troubleshoot the removed piece of equipment offline. In these situations, it is important to minimize the amount of time required to set up the system for the alternative component, and to provide a “plug and play” solution to limit downtime. The present invention addresses these issues.